Welding is one of the things that I have been wanting to learn. On and off, I have been cruising Craigslist for an entry level mig machine. A few weeks ago, I pulled the trigger on a Millermatic 135.

The machine came with a cart, bottle and fixed shade helmet. I added some gloves, welding coat, auto darkening helmet, welpers and some small magnets to round out the basic welding tools that I did not already have. I didn't set out to have a flame pattern on everything or Denver Bronco colors - plain fact is that is the one welding coat that was my size.

I rounded up some 1/8" plate proceeded to start burning some lines. There was quite a bit of tweaking involved (welder settings, helmet settings) but after a couple of evenings I could see the puddle and had good penetration of the metal. They were not (still are not) pretty looking welds. They are welds that are melting and fusing the metal. Perhaps they will get prettier over time.

So I set about to fabricate a bracket that will hold a hi-lift jack on the passenger side of my FJ40. I really think this is a great looking place to mount a jack and the passenger side mirror never really worked that great. I cut out a piece of my plate and picked up a piece of 1/8" by 1.5" strap.

I really did not take any photos through the fabrication process. I can tell you that I engineered as I went. My first bracket was not great - it put the top part of jack way too far outboard from the truck. No worries as it was straight forward to cut and fix by making it shorter. Despite paying attention to heat warpage, I did end up with a small amount of that. When I ground down the welds, it is clear the metal is solidly fused.

For the welds I put tack welds on each side but only welded (and ground) on the outer side. Here are is a shot of the tack welds on the inside.

The actual amount of time spent welding was much less than the amount of time spent in prep and finishing. Here are a couple of shots of the bracket in paint.

The painted bracket mounted to my FJ40 looks like this.

The hi-lift jack being mounted in the bracket looks like this.

It is a little thing, but oddly enough I feel like it a a huge accomplishment to take raw material and put it together all on my own.

A Smurf blue Hi-Lift jack with yellow base.. Wow, pretty neat. Good job, Ricardo and I didn't know you had Swedish ties. I wish somebody in my neighborhood would buy a welder and get good at it....hint, hint. Then I'd be satisfied too!